A Nearly Perfect Copy - By Allison Amend Page 0,22

abstraction and confession/expression and back toward observation and the notion of the artist as a commentator on modern society.

“Do you want to order for me?” she asked. “I don’t know what any of this is, anyway.”

“Um, okay.” Gabriel felt a quick, airless second of panic, then he settled. “Do you not like anything?” As soon as he said the sentence, he realized he’d said, “Don’t you like anything?”

But Colette graciously or unconsciously ignored the fault and said, “I’m French. I eat whatever doesn’t eat me first.”

“So you trust me?”

“Implicitly,” she said.

When the waiter came by their table Gabriel ordered paella for two, with mariscos, and a beet salad and some sausage and dates to start. The waiter took the menus and Colette sighed with relief; now there was room for her elbows.

He took a gulp of wine, feeling courage well up in him in inverse proportion to the sinking alcohol. He said, “You look beautiful.”

She smiled, pursed her mouth as if to deflect the compliment. Then she sat back in her chair. “Where are you from in Spain?”

“Near Barcelona.”

“Barthelona,” she mimicked his accent. “Hmmm, I liked it there. It was … God, this will sound stupid. It was very Parisian.” She laughed.

Gabriel smiled. “No, I see it,” he said. “Large boulevards, old, parks, cafés …”

“Well, I meant more like, when you study art, you get an idea of a place. My idea of Barthelona—” She paused.

“Very good,” he said.

“—was from Picasso and Dalí and Miró.”

“Picasso was barely from here. There.”

“I know,” she said. “Which is why I should have expected that his Barcelona would look like Paris. But, I didn’t.”

“Have you always lived in Paris?”

“Oh, no,” she said. “Can’t you tell by my accent?” Gabriel shook his head. She continued, “You know Parisians, unless you’re born here you might as well be from Mars. I’m from Chalon-sur-Saône. Do you know it?”

He shook his head again, contemplating her assessment of Parisians. So she too understood the continuing alienation of being a foreigner. Apparently her accent, which he couldn’t hear, branded her as an outsider too. He wanted to take her hand, but resisted.

“Nobody does,” she said. “It’s completely without interest. My father owns a smoke shop.” Colette pointed to her cigarette as if it were the natural result. She stubbed it out in the silver ashtray. It was an ingenious contraption that when lifted released the ash and the butt inside. “And what do your parents do?” she asked.

“My mother baked bread for the market, sold things,” he said. “My father played the guitar. He died when I was young.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. She shook her arm; a tinkling cascade of bracelets fell to her wrist. “How, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“No,” he said. “It was strange. He died of mushroom poisoning.”

“Seriously?” Colette asked.

Gabriel nodded, though his father had died of a heart attack. But he liked this story better. “He was very passionate about mushrooms, and he was never wrong when identifying them. I think someone tried to poison him.”

“You’re lying to me,” Colette said, hitting his forearm.

The waiter deposited the appetizers in front of them. When Gabriel motioned that she should serve herself, Colette reached over and took exactly half of each.

She hummed approval. “This is delicious. Is this really what the food is like?”

“Sort of,” Gabriel said. “I can’t really explain it. It’s all the same ingredients. It just has a taste that is different. Tomatoes taste different in Spain. So do beets.”

“It’s like going to a French restaurant in America,” Colette said. “The food there is totally inedible. Have you spent much time in New York?”

“No,” Gabriel admitted. “I don’t travel much.” In fact, he had never left Europe.

“I go for Tinsley’s quite often,” Colette said.

Before Gabriel could comment, the paella arrived and the waiter presented it to them before scraping the contents of the pan onto two plates, including the burned-crisp bottom layer of rice that Gabriel loved.

They ordered another bottle of wine. Colette’s eyes grew glassy and her lips a tad floppy, stained from her drink. He wondered if she might go home with him, or he with her. A wave of longing overtook him that was so acute he nearly choked, and took a large swallow of wine to hide the frisson. A silence fell while they ate. He wanted to keep her here, at this table, buzzed with liquor, in a sort of suspended animation. He knew the spell would be broken, even as the waiter reappeared to take their plates,